It was about a year ago that the other shoe fell. Granted, for many people, the other shoe probably fell just after Midnight Madness in 2007, when the initial infractions report on Kelvin Sampson’s continued misdeeds leaked out. But for me, it was on a Wednesday in February when the NCAA levied major violations against IU that I truly realized what IU had done. The common perception is that Bob Knight ran a clean program. While there’s no denying that, Indiana ran just as clean a program. We’re talking about a school that was coming up on 50 years without a major violation in any sport. That’s about 20 years longer than any other school in the Big Ten, a conference with a reputation for rules compliance.
That lead to the single more surreal week I’ve ever experienced as a sports fan. I skipped class that afternoon, watched IU lose a heartbreaker to Wisconsin that just felt fitting. Then there was Gameday’s trip to Bloomington, where the fans got their say in against Sampson and then wanted to focus on the team. And after the big win against Purdue, I had a drink at the Jungle Room and felt emotionally drained. Almost a shell of a fan. It’s not the fondest memory, but it’s sort of like a near death experience as a fan. You cherish the memory because it makes the good times that much better.
Now one year later, ESPN has a few articles looking at the situation. One is a short piece on five players affected by Sampson, none of whom ever played at IU. Two are from Ryan of Inside the Hall, the first an excellent piece looking back at Sampson that captures a lot of what IU fans felt about Sampson and how quickly it changed and the second a more lighthearted piece looking at four other things touched by Sampson. But the fourth is my favorite. The last two I mentioned are Insider articles, but I can’t resist quoting from this one. In it, ESPN talked with Brandon McGee and Armon Bassett. McGee had this to say about Gordon’s “news” that drug use was a divisive force on the IU team:
Gordon even went as far as to say it wasn’t D.J. White or the players who stayed at Indiana that had the drug problem. He made it clear: it was the guys who left. It wasn’t hard for McGee or anyone else to figure out whom Gordon was talking about. “You look at our team, three guys form Chicago, Jordan from Detroit, we were all a bunch of kids from the inner-city, people not from the best cities,” said McGee. “He singled everyone out that wasn’t from Carmel, Indiana. They just stereotyped it. It made everybody think it was true.”
Brandon’s comments are required reading for IU fans. If you can somehow read the whole article, make it a point to. Brandon points out two big flaws of IU fans.
First, IU fans are extremely mistrusting of outsiders. That means outside the family, outside the state, outside of the romantic vision of IU basketball. And inner city kids from Detroit and Chicago are outsiders. That’s not to say that IU fans can’t learn to love a player, just look at DJ White. But also look at Eric Gordon, who bolted for the NBA like everyone expected and isn’t exactly the most loved IU player despite doing, at least in my opinion, all that could reasonably be asked of him.
Second, IU fans are also love their discipline. A coach isn’t coaching unless he’s yelling and screaming. A coach isn’t teaching unless he’s dragging the slow learners kicking and screaming. A coach isn’t doing his job unless he’s showing who is in control. And ultimate expression of a coach’s control? Dismissing a player from the team.
In reality, all these are failures. They do not reflect well on anybody, Crean included. Crean’s triumph is the work he did to even clean up as much of the situation as he did. A lot of people said that the parade out of Bloomington made them feel like IU was back on the right track. I didn’t. I felt it was just the program hitting rock bottom because it could pull itself out of the hole. So let’s just be happy that, so far, things look better, and hope the guys that left seize an opportunity to do better, on and off the court, than they may have done at IU.
Latest Comments
RSS